How 'Flipping' the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture

Benjamin Rasmussen for The Chronicle

Andrew Martin's teaching techniques get students out of their seats during his class on evolutionary biology at the U. of Colorado at Boulder. Some students enjoy the "flipped" lectures that require them to help one another understand the material. Others resent being forced to work in groups.

By Dan Berrett

Andrew P. Martin loves it when his lectures break out in
chaos.

It happens frequently, when he asks the 80 students in his
evolutionary-biology class at the University of Colorado at Boulder
to work in small groups to solve a problem, or when he asks them to
persuade one another that the answer they arrived at before class
is correct.

When they start working together, his students rarely stay in
their seats, which are bolted to the floor. Instead they gather in
the hallway or